Top 5 Group Creativity Techniques to identify the project requirement

Identifying the project requirement helps the project manager to prepare the project scope. Gathering the project requirement is a crucial job. The entire project planning depends on how well you gather the information. A collection of requirement and preparing the scope is not a single person work. A group is required to perform the process. Today, I am going to explain top 5 group creativity technique to collect the requirement.

In the above picture, you can see five 5 group creativity technique to collect the requirement. These techniques are need not required to be sequential. I personally prefer it, in this way

1. Collect requirement using Idea/mind mapping technique:

The first step to collect the requirement is to pick-up an issue. Allow everyone to write down their idea. Let anyone in the group create a mind map and prepare the list of ideas.

2. Conduct Brainstorming session:

Brainstorming is a process of working on the idea and creating requirement out of that. In this process, allow anyone in the workshop to generate an unstructured requirements list for each idea captured on the mind map. Sometimes few group members can lose the focus from the initial topic. To ensure that the brainstorming remains focused on the initial topic, lay basic ground rules and let anyone freely generate fresh ideas and requirements on the topic.

3. Draw Affinity diagram:

This technique list of unstructured ideas to be classified into groups. It allows to the idea to organize into groups based on their natural relationship. Affinity diagram allows you to review and analyze the ideas.

4. Application of nominal group technique:

This technique helps to identify the most important requirements. It enhances brainstorming with a voting process used to rank the most useful ideas for further brainstorming or for prioritization. Rank each requirement on the affinity diagram with a priority: low, medium, high or from one to five. To avoid conflicts, facilitate an anonymous priority appraisal and ranking. Finally, tally the results and identify the most important requirements.

5. Delphi technique:

Delphi technique utilizes a decision matrix to provide a systematic analytical approach for establishing criteria, such as risk levels, uncertainty, and valuation, to evaluate and rank many ideas. It helps to close the process by running several rounds of independent feedback. Allow any individual or group revise the list of requirements. Share an anonymous outcome from each review round and continue with further rounds, keeping in mind the objective to reach consensus and convergence.

Let me know if you are using any other technique to collect the requirement in your project.

Basant is a full stack developer, software engineer and freelancer with broad and deep experience developing web applications. He has been working with web based tech companies in India for over 10 years, helping to build technology-based businesses from the ground up. He excels at programming back-end and front-end services in a variety of languages, and holds a Master’s degree in Computer Application.